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Enhancing Student Welfare: A Comprehensive Analysis of the User Interface for a University Mental Health Counselling App

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The prevalence of mental health problems has become alarming, with the worldwide occurrence of mental health problems and deaths due to suicide reaching significant numbers. In the Philippines, suicide rate has increased from 1984 to 2005 especially among the youth. This is evident in campus setting in the Philippines, with the death of at least ten college students in the past three years. Despite this prevalence, many of those experiencing mental health problems do not seek help because of factors such as inaccessibility of help and the stigma and discrimination brought by mental health conditions. Using insights collected from a series of consultations with the campus' counseling center, administrators, faculty, and students of the University of the Philippines Manila, this project designed and developed a mobile application which will provide a more convenient and accessible mental health first aid service to students that helps them avoid stigma and discrimination. The application connects students with trained peer counselors, while at the same time, protecting their anonymity through safeguards. It also collects data regarding the frequency of the software's use and the demographics of active users, which can be used in understanding the mental health status of each campus. The project shows potential not only in providing mental health intervention, but also in studying and preventing mental illnesses in college campuses.
Conference Paper
In this time and age, mental health and technology plays a big role in society. The app Companion is a mental health app which targets students during their struggle in life, where they may feel there is no one to talk to and no one to reach for help. The app aims to be a safe place for students to pour their thoughts and feelings out as they consult with qualified doctors. In this work, we provide a brief overview of the often overlooked issue in our society regarding mental health, especially during adolescence phase of student life. Companion app is built with students as its main community of interest while focusing on simplicity and long-term usability. The User Interface is built using Figma, turned into a real application without coding through the Bravo Studio platform, and integrated to a firebase realtime database with Airtable. We hope our app could make a safe space for students to lighten their pressure in life and help them heal their mental health.
Conference Paper
This article discusses how to use the resources of MOOC and Flipped Classroom related to mental health to improve the teaching quality of mental health education courses, how to apply Wechat platform and websites related to mental health to promote publicity of mental health education, and how to utilise online psychological counselling and electronic files of mental health to improve the effectiveness of psychological counselling and crisis intervention. Authors conclude that applying information technology is an effective method to promote university student mental health education.